Two roses

You see?

Diana's take on Wisconsin

Closing remarks on summer classes in Wisconsin

Even though there were kind of a lot of us in one room with not much privacy, my cabinmates made a cool thing happen with all of us. It makes me hopeful about the possibilities of Christian community and female community. And I learned some things about meeting people, especially about the rewards of accepting and respecting and being patient with people I don't think I can like: namely, glimpses of who and why they are, and some returned respect and goodwill.


I got to study by headlamp, which was a strange and excellent experience.


I loved the lake best.


I couldn't choose what to eat, or when; I couldn't prepare my own food; I couldn't eat alone (and I knew only one person when I came). These things freaked me out at the beginning. But I got through it.


And my anthropology class, which met in the little one-room library, was the awesome cake underneath all these toppings. I pwned some discussions, chewed over some important new brainfoods with my classmates, and got to ask my professor some personally urgent questions.

Heat wave

Nights in the sauna with our books

The agenda:

*studying
*lazing around underneath the ceiling fan
*fanatically hunting mosquitoes around the cabin
*we also became rather fond of backrub exchanges

Sweet hands in the evening

White girls dreading each others' hair in the woods.

Empty mornings in the cabin

I did not speak to the first group of cabinmates much. They were underclassmen and knew each other already, and I am quiet with groups of new people. The fact that I dropped my first class halfway through meant I was the only one remaining in the cabin after breakfast. I slept, cleaned, and felt restless and desperately bored. The quiet and empty space and morning light pleased my eye, though. Looking at the things my cabinmates had left out on their dressers, the way their sheets wrinkled, I felt I knew them in a strange way from these small things.

Studying by the shore

I'm back in California, my friends, and I have two rolls of 35mm from Wisconsin to share. We students returned to the Chicago area on Saturday, and I took a few days there to see my friends. And that was so lovely that now I'm kind of sad that I'll be away from them until October, even though San Francisco is the city I love.

These I scanned in the living room of the apartment where I slept, which belongs to a beautiful dreamy Christian sistren. (Sistren, yes, it is a word! I was pleased.) Their place reminded me of some of the things that second-wave feminists wrote about the need for women-only spaces, about the potential of communities of women; they had realized some of that on a small scale in their apartment.

But now I'm in California, and looking towards another summer class, and I've promised to buy myself a certain amazing and expensive book [this] once I find a job. And here for the next few days, there will be Wisconsin scenes.

Small-town Wisconsin

Week in photos (173-179)

173/365.


174/365. Raw Great Lakes copper.


175/365. Soccer Cabinmate's rice cake snack. I was impressed.


176/365.


177/365. "Guys, come help me burn the last three years of my life."


178/365. Amy.


179/365. This is a quote that doesn't mean what it used to.

Week in photos (167-172)

167/365.


168/365.


169/365. I took a picture and then I took a cell phone picture of it—I don't know why, but I liked it.


170/365.


171/365. Green summers are a foreign thing to me. (They are yellow in California.)


172/365.